Benedict Bars

I’ve been reading the Baker and Spice books Exceptional Cakes and Exceptional Breads, and I may end up making every item found in both books. Everything looks unbelievably good. I linked those titles to Amazon, but the Cakes book is unfortunately, currently unavailable. Baker and Spice shops are located in London and were founded on the principle of hand-made baking with traditional ingredients and methods. They rely on best-quality ingredients and careful baking techniques to achieve incredible goods that are not masked through decoration in any way. I like that approach, and the first item I had to try was the Benedict bar with a crunchy almond topping. My first question was why is this called a Benedict bar? There’s a note in the book explaining that the name comes from the South African Benedict cake which has similar flavors. I didn’t find any information online about this cake, so if anyone can tell me about it, I’m wondering what it’s like.

The recipes in these books are written with metric measurements by weight, and rather than doing conversions I used my kitchen scale set to grams. Now that I have that scale, I don’t know how I lived without it for so long. I did need some help in converting the Celsius oven temperature to Fahrenheit, and for that I used my handy Food Lover's Companion. This simple cookie bar started with a shortbread base. Interestingly, the shortbread ingredients included some corn flour which I luckily had in my bin of random flours. Other than that, it was a straightforward shortbread recipe with butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and vanilla. This was pressed into the bottom of an eight-inch square pan and chilled while the topping was made. The topping was made by melting butter with sugar, vanilla, a little milk, and sliced almonds. The chilled shortbread in the pan was topped with a layer of what was supposed to have been raspberry jam but in this case was black currant jelly, and then the topping was poured over it. This went into the oven for 30 minutes and smelled fantastic as it baked.

I let the pan cool and then placed it in the refrigerator to make it easier to cut into bars. This is a rare time when I think I will enjoy a cookie-type item better in its chilled state. The jelly layer is delicious when cold, and the topping and shortbread can do no wrong at any temperature. I would try to go on and on about the crunchy, nutty top, the fruity, sweet middle, and buttery, rich foundation of it all, but I’m running back to the kitchen to eat another one instead.

UPDATE:
Since the book is not available, and I had a request for the recipe, I'm including it below.

Benedict Bar
First prepare the shortbread crust:
150 g unsalted butter
225 g plain flour (All purpose flour)
4 T corn flour
1/2 t baking powder
125 caster sugar (granulated sugar) + more for sprinkling into pan
1/4 t sea salt
1 t vanilla extract

-spray a 24 x 20cm (I used an eight inch square pan, but slightly larger would also work) with cooking spray and sprinkle with sugar
-dice the butter straight from the refrigerator into a mixing bowl and leave to soften for 30 minutes; sift the flour, cornflour, and baking powder on top, then add the sugar, salt, and vanilla; rub together between your fingertips until the mixtures begins to cohere (Or, place in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix with the paddle attachment until it resembles breadcrumbs.)
-press into the prepared pan and chill in the refrigerator while making the topping

Bars:
100g unsalted butter
60g caster sugar (granulated sugar)
1 t vanilla extract
200g flaked almonds
3 T milk
raspberry jam (or blackcurrant jelly or whatever jam or jelly you have)

-preheat oven to 180 degrees C or 350 degrees F [Here's a handy conversion tool: http://www.metric-conversions.org/temperature/celsius-to-fahrenheit.htm]
- put butter, sugar, vanilla, almonds, and milk in a small saucepan over low heat, and warm until the butter melts; remove from heat and allow to cool
-remove shortbread from refrigerator and spread a layer of jam on top; pour cooled, melted butter mixture over top; bake for 25 to 30 minutes and then allow to cool on a rack; chill in the refrigerator for one hour to make cutting easier
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